Kempner: What will replace all those Toys R Us stores in metro Atlanta?

Liquidation sales at Toys R Us offer another reason to doubt the survival chances for any and all stores you walk into rather than visit online.

But the end of the greatest store of my childhood isn’t the whole story. We’re again about to witness a tantalizing test of brick-and-mortar’s future: seeing what happens to hundreds of soon-to-be-empty Toys R Us stores once the bankrupt “I-don’t-want-to-grow-up” retailer closes or sells all its stores.

Much of the space won’t stay vacant for more than a year. At least that’s what I’m told by metro Atlanta shopping center landlords and others in the industry.

Federal estimates show U.S. retail e-commerce sales are growing far faster than those of retail overall.

But retail as a whole is also growing, and physical-world sales still account for the vast majority of what we buy.

Doors were open at Toys ‘R’ Us at 2955 Cobb Parkway in Smyrna in January, but the chain plans to close all stores nationwide, including ones in Georgia such as in Smyrna, Buford, Duluth, Alpharetta, Dunwoody, Douglasville, Newnan, Fayetteville, Conyers, etc. Efforts are underway to try to find a buyer for some stores that might continue to sell toys. JOHN SPINK/JSPINK@AJC.COM

“It is not as bad as everyone expects,” shopping center guy Jay Baker told me about the impact of Toys R Us closings. “This whole idea of a retail apocalypse is really dramatic and probably overdone.”

He’s marketing space at the South Point, a big Henry County center where Toys R Us is one of several anchors.

Lots of places have too much shopping center space, but not his, Baker told me.

That might help him in the short term. In the long term, he’s betting people will continue to want to get out of their homes to shop. He told me he expects retailers will need less space as they use stores as more of a showroom than a way to stock lots of any one item. But, he said, “if Amazon comes up with one-hour shipping, I’m in trouble.”

The more likely scenario is at least temporary pain for landlords if Toys R Us stores close. For some, there will be a double whammy. In addition to losing rent from the toy retailer, some anchors have clauses in their leases that call for sharp rent cuts if other major anchors are no longer operating in the same center.

Some shopping center owners already were wrestling with other vacancies, such as one with a Toys R Us near struggling Gwinnett Place in Duluth.

I didn’t hear back from representatives of that center.

“There are definitely going to be some losers where they scrape the building and start over,” said Leo Wiener, who is part of a group that owns a shopping center down the street.

He’s already been pushing to fill an HHGregg store that closed last year. “You are going to have to be creative.”

The phrase “shopping center” is becoming a misnomer. Because landlords are increasingly turning to things you wouldn’t consider a store: fitness centers, government offices, bouncy entertainment places.

“There is no option that is not on the table for us,” Billy Harvin told me.

His Roswell-based company, American Star Development, owns some shopping centers, including one near the Mall of Georgia in Buford that includes a large Toys R Us.

“It’s not going to be a fun process,” in the months ahead, he told me.

He’s considering breaking the store into smaller retail spaces, with the idea that there are relatively few big-box retailers looking for big spaces these days.

And he’s talking to people interested in medical offices. He’s also considering tearing the building down and putting a hotel on the land and some adjacent property.

Toys R Us founder Charles Lazarus poses with a toy truck in this undated photo. Company officials announced on Thursday, March 22, 2018, that Lazarus had died. He was 94.

Photo: Jacques M. Chenet/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images

Some shopping center owners insist that in the long run they may see greater financial benefits and generate more traffic to their centers with something other than Toys R Us.

“This disruption in retail creates tremendous opportunities for us,” said Brian Finnegan, executive vice president of leasing for Brixmor, which owns nearly 500 U.S. shopping centers, including one beside an Alpharetta Toys R Us.

He said this year he sees lots of expansion plans among big chains he tracks, particularly for groceries, value apparel, fitness and stuff for homes.

What killed Geoffrey the giraffe

One thing I didn’t hear a lot of people talking about: another toy store.

There just aren’t many of those options left out there in the wake of Amazon, Walmart and Target. My Google search for toy stores around part of Atlanta’s northern suburbs turned up two tiny mom and pops.

And an adult sex toy store.

Not what I was looking for. I swear.

Toys R Us, just for the record, wasn’t undone solely by Amazon. The chain’s owners took on more debt than the stores and their Geoffrey the giraffe icon could handle.

The store themselves didn’t generate much magic with customers any more. I heard some former shoppers gripe about high prices. Harried parents talked about the insanity of bringing kids into a store with aisles of pressure to buy.

“I use to get my GI Joe guys there,” Harvin told me wistfully. Toys for his own kids came from elsewhere.

Times change. Retailers better, too. Same for “shopping” center owners.